![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 8th, 2018 03:33 pmI wish people understood what suicide and depression were, rather than "sad, felt unloved."
I know there's people who want me here. In the good days that's never in question. My son, my partner, my friends, and I know the cratering that goes on when someone suicides, because a friend did that in 2004, seemingly out of the blue, this gentle, caring phd student in pyschology just...killed himself. And left nary a trace of the why. We never got a why. It just happened.
I wish people understood that to someone with depression, it's not about 'YOU' and what you did or didn't do and how you loved the person. Its about them. When my depression seeps back in it's a mix of roiling seething fury at myself, a loathing of my self, storm clouds that roll in and suddenly I'm drowning in a flood of self loathing and rage.
And in those moments I want silence. I want solitude. I want the noise to stop. I want the entire world to disappear. I want to not hate myself for every little flaw and mis step and quirk, every decision and new day that has led me to where i am now. I don't see all the wonderful, I see a rap sheet of failure unscrolling into the distance, and I am standing in judgement of myself as the very worst of a person unworthy.
Of course all the mental health campaigns tell us to "reach out" and you think in the moments of this as my brain is bringing down the wrath that I should reach to you and say "I'd rather die right this instant?" I went a good five years without any suicidal ideation, and even the birth of my son which people worried would trip a case of PPD, I breezed on through.
And then when he was three and a half, IT returned.
This time the factors were different. I'd unsuccessfully been unable to return to work, a thing borne of this city's delicate sensibilities about working mothers and a rigid inflexibility to the weight of a young child's care within the realm of being a working parent. A lack of daycare services and the affordability, and as I got a few interviews I felt I was always on some kind of mis-step with people.
I had a gap in my work resume for a return to college in my late 30s, and then having a child, and this one-two punch was fairly the death blow. And I'm not alone as I sit in the playroom with my son at 3.5, as we go over "hop little bunny" one more time. I should be enjoying this but I only see the work crater widen day by day.
I take my son out and I get harangued, threatened by strangers who feel the need to berate me for being "a breeder" or that our stroller takes up precious room or that he merely exists, as my existence fades. My husband never fully grasps the extent of the vitriol at me and my son for merely "being" and I stop telling him. He's of the stoic rather unemotional sort, and doesn't seem to "feel" as I do. I'm isolated, even among other parents, as they don't speak english or they have their own social structures that I lack. My kid is high energy and as he climbs the walls my sanity comes down with all the books on the shelves.
We put him in daycare to ostensibly free me to return to work and for other factors for his benefit. I get interviews, sometimes 3 or 4 in a day, but most of them amount to an ask to bring my resume in person and I go in, impeccably groomed, to hostile questions of why I took that time off and what am I even doing in this city and why don't we own a house and car and most of the interviews I leave, feeling utterly savaged, and sobbing.
I write books, and short fiction, non fiction with some middling success and I do some jewelery work but even then, I can't catch a foothold as much as I try. I lie awake in terror of my own mounting debts and the frustration of being largely off grid in the center of a city with barely three bucks to my name. My husband makes a decent salary but he forgets in his own head that I exist or that we could use some cash and so it's in fits and drabs. My needs are pretty much a last priority. I feel..invisible.
From outwardly, it all looks fine. You'd think I had it MADE. But the isolation even if there's hundreds around you, that you look back at all you've done it will never BE enough.
And it never matters if someone reaches out to you ( hint they never do. Honest to fuck the onus is on us to find that one person and pull them down like a life raft in 75 foot wave storm seas. Sorry.
I tell my GP of my worries the depression, the suicidal ideation. My partner applauds me for the bravery and I am told "I brought it on myself and I should have mentioned it sooner and it's because Im fat and I should get a job, and its not her job to care and she gets...furiously angry.
At that point I very nearly blew my head off. I opt NOT to go to CAMH, because I haven't heard much good and I don't want to deal with the rest of the world ( remember the NOISE) and I use some of my husband's feebling EAP counsellling sessions where she's largely ineffectual and pointless and I play along because that's what you do when you wait four months to see a psychiatrist who cancels on you and sneaks you in anyway when they realized they erroneously cancelled and says "you're right the drugs we have won't work" because the last time you tried them they left you fucking dazed and intractibly vomiting and "dead" inside.
people say "get used to them! it won't change who you are!" and in my case, i physically cannot tolerate them, and I'm at more of a suicide risk with them. So the safety net is lacking peers, therapy or drugs. Any provincial plan sponsored therapists? there's none in my catchment and I'm told flippantly that I could call around and beg.
You may as well as me then, to climb everest in heels. Same level of impossible. I cannot call 17 different doctors begging for a lifeline that doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, with every high profile suicide people cheerfully post "talk to me talk to anyone mental health awareness!" and I quietly wait, enjoying the good days ( and we do have them) and waiting for the moment my brain blurts "you should kill yourself."
And it will. And I consider it, and i wish i could and I think "i have to get S from school and I can't not be there I'll deal with it later" and brain goes "ok, once everyone's asleep, go on, kill yourself. No one cares. You're alone. Come on. Do it. Look at the mess you've made. Just go, you can't ever fix this and people will find out what a catastrophic mess you are" and it whispers awful things and you believe it because you see what everyone else can't see.
And its not really money or success or anything that is an insulator around depression, it's exhaustion and isolation and expectation and a stew of things that money couldn't ever fix. All the awards could never fix.
I've had a few moments of feeling at utter peace and I go back to that when I need it. Standing on top of Alp grum in the -13c weather and it's quiet and alone and there's no fucking idiot chatter and I can hear just the wind softly singing and oh the sweet air and silence. And then, standing in Dam Square in Amsterdam with the sounds of the city, the bells of the trams, the cool air and I feel a strange sense of heart-happy as I walk along the streets of Haarlem with my son and my husband and once more when i walk early one morning to get a tattoo, and my heart is not angry and my brain isn't whispering "die" it's saying this is quiet and this is home and we are happy.
And then we return to a city full of noise and vapid and back to reality but having lived in amsterdam before I always felt even in the worst of it, heart happy.
But it's never a guarantee and depression is never "sad", its so much more complex and yet we who deal with it are expected to educate people who think it's about sad, and reach out when we're drowning so you can throw down a platitude.
I don't believe the drugs we use are effective. It silences the brain, but it doesn't reach the tangled mess that is the loathing dark.
in my case it tells me "you were a sickly kid, you almost died then, lets just fix this" and tells me as I played by the rules that I still failed and I have nothing for it, and no reason to go on.
The very only thing that keeps me here is my son and the voice of kids who say "my mom killed myself and it destroyed my world." and I won't do that to him.
Depression lies, but it whispers and persists and shouts and pushes and even if we advocate for our selves we're still...not getting help and if talking was a miracle cure it'd be great but it's not and so we sit in silence as you post "awareness" memes and when we reach out you're uncomfortable and running and it's not on friends to cope with you saying 'i want to end my life".
I like how one friend posited that we don't face this head on or we'd have to admit many of our social structures, economics and life are in direct opposition to mental health. We're but the expendable number on the tally sheet. 95 of you are happy to accept the way things are as 5 of us fall we're the price to be paid.
I know there's people who want me here. In the good days that's never in question. My son, my partner, my friends, and I know the cratering that goes on when someone suicides, because a friend did that in 2004, seemingly out of the blue, this gentle, caring phd student in pyschology just...killed himself. And left nary a trace of the why. We never got a why. It just happened.
I wish people understood that to someone with depression, it's not about 'YOU' and what you did or didn't do and how you loved the person. Its about them. When my depression seeps back in it's a mix of roiling seething fury at myself, a loathing of my self, storm clouds that roll in and suddenly I'm drowning in a flood of self loathing and rage.
And in those moments I want silence. I want solitude. I want the noise to stop. I want the entire world to disappear. I want to not hate myself for every little flaw and mis step and quirk, every decision and new day that has led me to where i am now. I don't see all the wonderful, I see a rap sheet of failure unscrolling into the distance, and I am standing in judgement of myself as the very worst of a person unworthy.
Of course all the mental health campaigns tell us to "reach out" and you think in the moments of this as my brain is bringing down the wrath that I should reach to you and say "I'd rather die right this instant?" I went a good five years without any suicidal ideation, and even the birth of my son which people worried would trip a case of PPD, I breezed on through.
And then when he was three and a half, IT returned.
This time the factors were different. I'd unsuccessfully been unable to return to work, a thing borne of this city's delicate sensibilities about working mothers and a rigid inflexibility to the weight of a young child's care within the realm of being a working parent. A lack of daycare services and the affordability, and as I got a few interviews I felt I was always on some kind of mis-step with people.
I had a gap in my work resume for a return to college in my late 30s, and then having a child, and this one-two punch was fairly the death blow. And I'm not alone as I sit in the playroom with my son at 3.5, as we go over "hop little bunny" one more time. I should be enjoying this but I only see the work crater widen day by day.
I take my son out and I get harangued, threatened by strangers who feel the need to berate me for being "a breeder" or that our stroller takes up precious room or that he merely exists, as my existence fades. My husband never fully grasps the extent of the vitriol at me and my son for merely "being" and I stop telling him. He's of the stoic rather unemotional sort, and doesn't seem to "feel" as I do. I'm isolated, even among other parents, as they don't speak english or they have their own social structures that I lack. My kid is high energy and as he climbs the walls my sanity comes down with all the books on the shelves.
We put him in daycare to ostensibly free me to return to work and for other factors for his benefit. I get interviews, sometimes 3 or 4 in a day, but most of them amount to an ask to bring my resume in person and I go in, impeccably groomed, to hostile questions of why I took that time off and what am I even doing in this city and why don't we own a house and car and most of the interviews I leave, feeling utterly savaged, and sobbing.
I write books, and short fiction, non fiction with some middling success and I do some jewelery work but even then, I can't catch a foothold as much as I try. I lie awake in terror of my own mounting debts and the frustration of being largely off grid in the center of a city with barely three bucks to my name. My husband makes a decent salary but he forgets in his own head that I exist or that we could use some cash and so it's in fits and drabs. My needs are pretty much a last priority. I feel..invisible.
From outwardly, it all looks fine. You'd think I had it MADE. But the isolation even if there's hundreds around you, that you look back at all you've done it will never BE enough.
And it never matters if someone reaches out to you ( hint they never do. Honest to fuck the onus is on us to find that one person and pull them down like a life raft in 75 foot wave storm seas. Sorry.
I tell my GP of my worries the depression, the suicidal ideation. My partner applauds me for the bravery and I am told "I brought it on myself and I should have mentioned it sooner and it's because Im fat and I should get a job, and its not her job to care and she gets...furiously angry.
At that point I very nearly blew my head off. I opt NOT to go to CAMH, because I haven't heard much good and I don't want to deal with the rest of the world ( remember the NOISE) and I use some of my husband's feebling EAP counsellling sessions where she's largely ineffectual and pointless and I play along because that's what you do when you wait four months to see a psychiatrist who cancels on you and sneaks you in anyway when they realized they erroneously cancelled and says "you're right the drugs we have won't work" because the last time you tried them they left you fucking dazed and intractibly vomiting and "dead" inside.
people say "get used to them! it won't change who you are!" and in my case, i physically cannot tolerate them, and I'm at more of a suicide risk with them. So the safety net is lacking peers, therapy or drugs. Any provincial plan sponsored therapists? there's none in my catchment and I'm told flippantly that I could call around and beg.
You may as well as me then, to climb everest in heels. Same level of impossible. I cannot call 17 different doctors begging for a lifeline that doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, with every high profile suicide people cheerfully post "talk to me talk to anyone mental health awareness!" and I quietly wait, enjoying the good days ( and we do have them) and waiting for the moment my brain blurts "you should kill yourself."
And it will. And I consider it, and i wish i could and I think "i have to get S from school and I can't not be there I'll deal with it later" and brain goes "ok, once everyone's asleep, go on, kill yourself. No one cares. You're alone. Come on. Do it. Look at the mess you've made. Just go, you can't ever fix this and people will find out what a catastrophic mess you are" and it whispers awful things and you believe it because you see what everyone else can't see.
And its not really money or success or anything that is an insulator around depression, it's exhaustion and isolation and expectation and a stew of things that money couldn't ever fix. All the awards could never fix.
I've had a few moments of feeling at utter peace and I go back to that when I need it. Standing on top of Alp grum in the -13c weather and it's quiet and alone and there's no fucking idiot chatter and I can hear just the wind softly singing and oh the sweet air and silence. And then, standing in Dam Square in Amsterdam with the sounds of the city, the bells of the trams, the cool air and I feel a strange sense of heart-happy as I walk along the streets of Haarlem with my son and my husband and once more when i walk early one morning to get a tattoo, and my heart is not angry and my brain isn't whispering "die" it's saying this is quiet and this is home and we are happy.
And then we return to a city full of noise and vapid and back to reality but having lived in amsterdam before I always felt even in the worst of it, heart happy.
But it's never a guarantee and depression is never "sad", its so much more complex and yet we who deal with it are expected to educate people who think it's about sad, and reach out when we're drowning so you can throw down a platitude.
I don't believe the drugs we use are effective. It silences the brain, but it doesn't reach the tangled mess that is the loathing dark.
in my case it tells me "you were a sickly kid, you almost died then, lets just fix this" and tells me as I played by the rules that I still failed and I have nothing for it, and no reason to go on.
The very only thing that keeps me here is my son and the voice of kids who say "my mom killed myself and it destroyed my world." and I won't do that to him.
Depression lies, but it whispers and persists and shouts and pushes and even if we advocate for our selves we're still...not getting help and if talking was a miracle cure it'd be great but it's not and so we sit in silence as you post "awareness" memes and when we reach out you're uncomfortable and running and it's not on friends to cope with you saying 'i want to end my life".
I like how one friend posited that we don't face this head on or we'd have to admit many of our social structures, economics and life are in direct opposition to mental health. We're but the expendable number on the tally sheet. 95 of you are happy to accept the way things are as 5 of us fall we're the price to be paid.
